With WordPress about to release the biggest update in years, we have been quietly waiting for a statement regarding what this means for Enfold, it’s support and future development. For many like us, Enfold has become a staple and when you have a bunch of licenses, updates like Gutenberg can create a lot of uncertainty, especially when we don’t know where you all stand on it. We can imagine the announcement of Gutenberg probably scared a lot of people there, but we are feeling the same.

Will Gutenberg break Avia? Will we need a plugin to disable Gutenberg? Will Avia become a set of Gutenberg modules? Will there be a conversion tool?

Christian, we really need to know. We’ve built a lot of stuff around what you and the team have done, and need a little reassurance that all of our work is not going to become unusable in the future.

This should not be buried in an answer to another question. It should be front and center to everyone, as it has HUGE implications. The 4.2.7 update has more prominence, yet Gutenberg has the potential to Additionally, it is April and Gutenberg is about to be released. An update would be really nice on where Christian sees the development of Gutenberg and how it impacts Avia.

Couldn’t agree more Jason. The things they do choose to bring front and center (e.g. ” WooCommerce DE Erweiterung für Kriesi Themes”) is baffling to me. Stuff that’s 3 years old? Really?

I’d also like to see some transparency around update releases. We were going to see 4.2.7 earlier, but that got pushed back to “the first two weeks of April” and now that time has also passed. It’s pretty common to also list what’s on the horizon (i.e. Coming Soon). It doesn’t have to be promises, but man…just let people know what’s coming down the road.

Gutenberg will be one of the biggest releases for WordPress thats for sure. But the core team has still a lot of problems to overcome, problems that do not yet have a final solution. Until this is the case it’s hard for developers to make any detailed announcements, since we can’t be for certain what tools we will have to work with. Right now there are only about 1000 Gutenberg Beta testers, according to the core team, and it will last some time until this number increases. Until then we don’t really see the need to make any special announcements, since only informed users and developers even know about this right now :)

As soon as a WP 5.0 Beta is released we probably will do. But I am willing to bet a good amount that this is not going to happen soon. I predict we have several months until a final release and at least a few until we get a core version that includes the Gutenberg plugin. However: once a Beta version is available we will be able to implement all changes we need to quickly. We got 2 new developers on board so it will probably take us a week or two to have a version for Enfold that works fine with Gutenberg. So what I am trying to say (basically): don’t worry we will take care of everything, no need for you to do anything else other than installing the latest Enfold version ;)

But right now there is not a lot of new information, so what I said in other threads still holds true:

We will make Enfold 100% compatible. You will have the option to either use Gutenberg (which will replace the default TinyMCE editor) or our Advanced Layout Builder. In the future, depending on how flexible Gutenberg becomes, we might even merry the two editors but thats probably far ahead when I look at the development speed of this new editor :)

@wp Turned Up:
We already are a lot more transparent than previously but there is a limit right now that we can’t cross because we don’t want to disappoint people with feature announcements or timelines that might be changed or pushed back. We already have increased the transparency by releasing a guesstimate for the next update in the sidebar, and by adding a “What’s next” section to each blog post that discusses the general direction of the theme. Once we have overcome the roadblocks that we currently face (more about that in the Blog post tomorrow) we might get more in detail, but right now thats as transparent as we can get ;)

As for the pushback of 4.2.7: we just recently decided it would be easier to skip that altogether since 4.3 seems to be stable. Which means you will get a new major release at the end of the week, along with blog post and “What’s next” infos ;)

Today I installed Gutenberg. When I went to an existing Page where I used the Avia Layout Builder, although the Layout Builder content is still there and active, there is a duplicate version of the content in both WordPress Gutenberg design mixed with Avia’s short codes above the Layout Builder content.

I then went into the Layout Builder’s Text Block (which is below the new Gutenberg junk) that I had set up originally. The text in “Visual” mode is invisible. In the “Text” mode, there is an array of short codes and enveloping the text.

Lastly, when I attempt to create a new Page, I cannot locate the Avia Layout Builder (blue button) option.

As you stated in your opening thread, you may not respond to me directly with this information. That’s fine. I just wanted to give you another view of what your customers may be experiencing.